


A Dream Come True

by Adira_Tyree



Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Absurd nicknames abound, Blood, Caesar's Legion, Gen, Graphic Violence, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, In face he's really bad with names, Memory Loss, Mild Gore, Mildly Referenced Medical Procedures, Six isn't good with names, The Arena, This thing is laced with crack, Trauma, lots of blood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-28
Updated: 2014-08-28
Packaged: 2018-02-15 04:28:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2215836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adira_Tyree/pseuds/Adira_Tyree
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Six could almost thank that man for blowing away his past. That part where he tried to kill him though? That's a whole 'nother story. Also, Vulpes and Caesar aren't really -in- this per se, but eh. Whatever. They're there briefly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Dream Come True

**Author's Note:**

> Writing in hopes that it'll fix my writing slump. This is what happened when I tried typing things today.

 

If there had been a real reason for it, Six wouldn’t have minded so much. It’s a crap world, the wasteland. People get shot every damn day, and he was grateful enough that it didn’t kill him. If anything it could almost have been a favor that the bullet had wiped out all the shit that was in his past.

That was why he’d taken the job – to escape his past. That was why his blood cried out in agony every time he saw an empty bottle of whiskey, or vodka, or scotch or beer or anything with some goddamned alcohol in it. Why the tips of his fingers were always tingling and the crook of his elbow was full of tiny little needle-sized holes. Anything he could do to get away was good enough for him.

In some ways, he would have wanted to thank that jackass in the checkered suit. But that wouldn’t make up for the guy trying to kill him over a fucking poker chip.

_“Damn thing isn’t worth this shit to me,” Six had said, trying to stare him in the eye. Those damn black-and-white squares kept dragging his gaze away. Who the hell even wore something like that in the wasteland? Obviously this guy didn’t get off the Strip much._

_“That pretty little thing is worth more than you know,” the checkered suit said. “You think I’d have come all the way out here to find you if it wasn’t?”_

_“So buy it off me. I’ve walked a long damn way for not many caps. Make it worth my while and I’ll just keep on walking all the way to New Reno.” Gang-member junkie-flunkie, obviously not from the same group. He’s already paid good caps to get this guy to go along with this. And he’s not even paying attention to what’s happening._

_“Sorry Kid, but it ain’t gonna swing that way.”_

 

Then blackness, for a while. It was still dark when Six had woken up again with his hands tied in front of him. There had been two junkie-flunkies, not just the one. One in front of him, one sneaking up behind. Maybe if he hadn’t been half-drunk it would have worked out a little better. Checkered Suit and the Junkie Bros helped him into an early grave with more than enough of that weird, old-world slang. He tried rolling in his grave after he could still hear it as the group walked away, just for the fuck of it, but the weight of the dirt on top of him was too much.

Waking up in Doc’s shack had been a surprise. Being dead hadn’t been nearly as interesting as he’d hoped, either. Just blackness, then moments later? Bright, blinding light of a surgeon’s lamp, only with one of the bulbs broken, and another hesitantly flickering.

Blackness again, laced with the soft hues of Med-X to lay him back to sleep. It felt warm. Six couldn’t recall a time when someone had so willingly drugged him up. In fact, he couldn’t remember much at all. Back to sleep.

It had taken hours for the Doc to get him stable. Longer to convince him he needed to stay around while his cracked ribs healed and his body remembered how to function. Really, the body was doing fine on its own. The problem was with him mastering it again.

Months passed, filled with little alarms from the blasted contraption Doc had clamped onto his arm. Eating alarm, sleeping alarm, the drinking alarm would have been alright if it was reminding him he was about to sober up instead of reminding him he was nearing dehydration. He couldn’t remember a whole lot from before being shot, but he remembered why he drank. He drank to forget. And whatever it was he was trying to forget by drinking was probably worth keeping suppressed.

On the positive side, the strange, miniature terminal on his arm had an excellent map system. Without it there wouldn’t have been any way for Six to follow Checkered Suit back to the strip and all the way back to the center of the Legion’s forward base. The Computer Nerd-Lord of the Strip had told him to go chat with the History Nerd-Lord about the secret beneath the Fort, and Lucky for him the Pre-War-Swag Nerd-Lord AKA Checkered Suit had been there waiting for him. Tied up and on his knees.

It was a wish come true.

“Big Red says I get to decide how you die,” Six said, staring down at Checkered Suit. “Got any preferences?”

“Yeah,” he said with a short laugh. “To die in my sleep at a ripe old age after a marathon session of hey-hey with thirty sex-starved broads. You’ll set that up?”

“Or I could just hack you to bits here while you’re still tied up.” Six raised an eyebrow.

Checkered Suit’s skin paled to match the white squares of his jacket. “Yeah… getting butchered like livestock. Something to aspire to.”

“Maybe you’ll get lucky and live through it. Then with months of therapy and a thirst for blood, you can have another go at me. We can keep this cycle up forever if we try. Besides, all that matters is that I look you in the eye before you die, right? That way I ain’t a fink?” Six couldn’t help but grin as the realization truly set in on Checkered Suit.

“Don’t think I don’t see the irony in this.” He twists his wrists against their ropes in vain. “So what’s it gonna be?”

Six inhaled deeply, closing his eyes. This moment was what he’d been wanting more than anything – for almost as long as he could remember. The scent of blood was on the air, the distant clashing of fists and swords filled his ears as all in the Fort waited for _his_ word, _his_ command.

_I could get used to this._

“I want to beat the living shit out of you with this whole damn army watching, cheering for me to kill you with as much blood and pain as I can dish out. Cheering for you to die.” Six turned away. “I want to kill this son-of-a-bitch in the arena.”

“Fine,” Big Red said with a smile. “I’ll have Otho set it up for you. Meet him at the entrance to the arena in about an hour.”

That hour had been the longest of his life.

Checkered Suit got hauled off down to the arena and word spread fast that there was going to be a fight. It didn’t matter to Six that he wasn’t particularly good with a machete – something about depth perception after being shot, Doc had figured. He wanted this fight to take a very long time.

The man with the dog-headed hood told him where all the major arteries were, in case he wanted to miss them.

When he finally got to face off against Checkered Suit (who was for once sporting something other than his trademark), Six found out how much determination could make up for his lack of skill. Checkered Suit was better with a machete than he was with a gun, apparently, but he was easy to distract. Feinting to one side, then the other, it wasn’t long before Six was the only one with a weapon.

“Part of me doesn’t want to kill you,” Six shouted over the din surrounding them.

“It’s a bit late for that now, kid!”

“Only so that I could keep hunting you! You made it too easy and now the game’s all over!”

“You’re not known for your luck!”

Six dragged his blade across the other man’s arm. The blunt metal tore through his skin more than it cut, letting the blood poor freely. “Then you must be a _really_ terrible shot for me to be still standing here at all!”

Checkered Suit cried out in pain, clamping a hand over the fresh wound and crumpling to the ground to roll away from him. Redness welled up between his fingers anyway.

“You’ve got me there I guess. Maybe it was just karma for trying to do you in in the first place.”

Six kicked him hard in the ribs, feeling them bend beneath his boot. It left a dusty, brown print where his kick had landed. “Well I’m just going to keep dishing out more of it, so I hope you’re ready.”

Soon enough Checkered Suit was sporting a black eye and a bloody nose. Pieces of the flimsy armor he’d been given lay scattered across the arena floor, but Six hadn’t gotten away with it unscathed. Something about the way his shoulder tingled worried him, and there was a glowing bruise blooming on his jaw. Too much adrenaline was pumping through him to feel the pain of it then, but he knew he would be hurting later.

Each slice Six made tasted like victory, each punch like triumph; but as it went on, the appeal began to fade away. There was no reason to drag it out. Six wasn’t going to sleep any better knowing he’d landed 30 hit instead of 29.

With the way the mess of human on the ground was looking, it wouldn’t matter much anyway.

Six lowered his machete. “I don’t need to kill you.”

“Would you believe me if I said I wouldn’t mind dying right about now?” Checkered Suit said with a cough. Blood splattered the ground and dribbled down his chin.

“Yeah, I would,” Six said, taking a fistful of the man’s hair and dragging his gaze up to meet Six’s own. “But you didn’t kill me. You left me with broken bones, a punctured lung, a hole in the head and a whole lot of pain – but you didn’t kill me.”

“I assure you, it wasn’t intentional.” His tone was dry and agitated. “Just get it over with, will ya?”

Six leaned in closer so only the man on the ground could hear his words or read his lips. “You dropped me unconscious into a grave in the middle of nowhere and assumed I would die. Let’s see how it turns out for you.” Letting go of him, Six brought down the hilt of his machete hard across the back of Checkered Suit’s skull. This time it was his turn to get a taste for the blackness.

Six dropped the machete. “Good enough.”

**Author's Note:**

> Tagged this as "Major Character Death" because of the somewhat ambiguous ending. It could go most any way. Feel free to leave your thoughts/opinions in the comments, should you be interested. =]


End file.
